Why Mike Birbiglia's comedy is seriously good for you

ANDREW WHITE / NYT

Comedian Mike Birbiglia and his wife, Jennifer Hope Stein, a poet, in their apartment in New York, Birbiglia's debut Broadway show, "The New One," had a five-day run at the La Jolla Playhouse in January of 2018.

Comedian Mike Birbiglia and his wife, Jennifer Hope Stein, a poet, in their apartment in New York, Birbiglia's debut Broadway show, "The New One," had a five-day run at the La Jolla Playhouse in January of 2018. (ANDREW WHITE / NYT)

Maybe you missed his five-day run at the La Jolla Playhouse earlier this year. Perhaps you will also be missing his current debut appearance on Broadway, where his one-man show — “The New One” — just opened at the Cort Theatre.

But thanks to the stand-up specials airing on Netflix and clips available on YouTube, you do not have to miss the mood-altering miracle that is stand-up comedian Mike Birbiglia.

He may be currently wowing happy audiences on the other side of the country, but he is also waiting for you inside your nearest screen. Sort of like an emergency fire-extinguisher, except with life-sustaining laughs where the fire-retardant would be.

With his friendly, Everyguy face, pre-wrinkled Dad wardrobe and air of perpetual bemused bafflement, the Boston-raised comedian does not look or act like the kind of stand-up hero who is going to save you from post-election exhaustion, pre-Thanksgiving anxiety or Netflix-browsing overload.

But bless his nerdy soul, he is. Because like the Everyguy himself, Birbiglia’s deceptively comfy observations about families and relationships and why you should never go on a ride called “The Scrambler” after you’ve eaten popcorn, peanuts, ice cream and candy pack a sharp gut punch.

You will laugh until you cry, because you have a pretty good idea about where his stories are going and you are painfully familiar with the uncomfortable place they’re going to end up. Because you have been there. We have all been there.

“I think he recognizes the comic absurdity in how we live our lives in a day-to-day fashion,” said Gabriel Greene, director of artistic development for the La Jolla Playhouse, which hosted a touring version of “The New One” in January.

“It’s sort of akin to observational comedy, the idea of, ‘What is the deal with airplane food?’ But whereas a joke like that is generic, Mike has the capacity to strip himself bare in a way that we recognize because he is sharing something we never dare admit about ourselves to ourselves. He is honest to a cringe-inducing level and he is disarmingly funny.”

My family and I stumbled upon Birbiglia’s stand-up comedy the way most Netflix subscribers stumble upon most things — by accident, and in a way we could not replicate again if we tried.

Maybe it was through a Jim Gaffigan special or a “Friends” binge. Or maybe it was Saturday night and my husband had been clicking through the queue for 20 fruitless minutes and I finally said, “Oh for God’s sake, just stop there.”

But by some magic, there he was. Mike Birbiglia, comedy savior.

Our lucky find was “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend,” the 2013 Netflix special taken from his off-Broadway show of the same name. Like other Birbiglia stand-up shows — 2008’s “What I Should Have Said Was Nothing,” 2017’s “Thank God for Jokes” — this one centers on a long-ish story about something that doesn’t scream, “This is going to be hilarious!” The story involves a car accident. One that is so serious, it gives Birbiglia the chance to explain what a T-bone accident is.

Then he doubles back to the night he met Jenny, the woman who became the girlfriend he’d been fighting with right before he and his car were T-boned. Their first sort-of date does not go well in a quietly excruciating way that you will recognize if you have ever been on the wrong end of a kissing-related disaster.

Which reminds Birbiglia of his first kissing-related disaster, which requires a journey back to junior high and the aforementioned adventure on The Scrambler. It does not go well for young Mike or for his hopes of losing his kissing virginity.

But thanks to Birbiglia’s klutzy yet perfect physical re-enactment of the ride and its Technicolor climax, the experience will go very well for you. Unless you have also just eaten popcorn, peanuts, ice cream and candy. In which case, have Kleenex handy. And maybe a pail.

So yes. He’s really funny. But as “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” eventually winds its way back to the accident and its Jenny-related aftermath, it leads you to the heart of what makes Mike Birbiglia your comedy savior. It is the fact that he is not a joke-teller, but storyteller. It is also the fact that we, the audience, are part of the story because it is also our story.

“Seeing a show of Mike’s is like catching up with an old friend over drinks and who sometimes gets painfully honest in their catching up,” Greene said. “A lot of the idea behind it is that you are cringing because he is exposing something that is very embarrassing, but it is something we recognize in ourselves.”

Whether it is the risk you take when you fall in love or the leap into the void that is parenthood, the truth at the heart of Mike Birbiglia’s comedy is that life is a Scrambler, and we are all riding it together. The ride may be messy and scary, but it gives us a great excuse to laugh and cry and hang on to the person next to us.